| Beowulf - Click HERE for Original Thread |
| Cobra_R |
So I am nearing the end of my course. and I have a new plan for computers. I am going to build a Beowulf in my basement.
anyone ever do this before? its gonna be my 4000 or less dollar pet project
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf_cluster
Who wouldnt want to own a supercomputer in there basement?
IMAGINE THE PORN!
jk |
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| Invalid Zero |
| What's the point? |
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| Cobra_R |
I dunno what the point is its fun and gonna be reall cool when its completed.
not to mention not many people can claim they built a supercomputer in there basement on a resume. more or less its for the skill and experience.
Its gonna be cool to see what I can do with it when i am done.
if you look up beowulf .org there are tons of universitys that have built them. if you got a couple old POS pcs you can do it as long as you know Linux or BSD(my personal preference). |
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| Invalid Zero |
Yeah but.... why?
What's so super? Can it play games at good resolution? |
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| baker_jeff |
Seems interesting. How about using Quad-Core systems? :cool:
Q6600 are 300 bucks now... |
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| Malaria |
this would be super cool, but what are you gona do about the power consumption and how are you gona reliably cool the computers down?
other then those 2 issues i think this would be a wicked project and a great learning experience. keep us updated :thumbup: |
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| midnite |
so give us some details, what kind/how much hardware are you going to use?
and more importantly, can i get a shell account to crack passwords with?...i mean compile source code with.. :D |
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| midnite |
quote:
Originally posted by Malaria
this would be super cool, but what are you gona do about the power consumption and how are you gona reliably cool the computers down?
other then those 2 issues i think this would be a wicked project and a great learning experience. keep us updated :thumbup:
i don't really see power and cooling being an issue for a system this small. it would be like running 8 computers at once. lets see.. each node will need a power supply, motherboard, cpu, memory, and disk space.
psu - cheap one - 40$
motherboard - any with gb lan, onboard video - 100$
cpu - q6600 - 330$
memory - 1gig - 50$
hdd - 80gig - 50$
one could build 7 quad-core nodes for 4000$. still need a 8port gb switch. could save some $ by booting off cheap 15$ 1gig usb flash drives, instead of having a hard disk.
:dunno:
2.4ghz x 28cores would make quite the nice little super computer! |
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| Cobra_R |
thats a good idea.
but before I shell out a shitload of cash I am gonna go scavenge some POS pc's together. around 4 that can boot and have atleasst a 10/100 NIC will do. as soon as I can get that to work and write down all the configurations and tune it. then I am gonna get some metal shelving and around 6 boxes to start and build it from there. eventually I want it to be set up so I have a hosts file and when I get a new node I just put the hostname in the hosts file and give it a DHCP address and it will add to the cluster. simple and easy however I think its gonna be much harder to setup.
I am really liking the quadcore Idea. I wonder if they will drop in price in the near future.? Gonna pick up a 16 port switch.
hopefully by this time next year I will have the fastest supercomputer in edmonton.:D
what is your computer related experience?
I build my own gaming rigs....setup networks, worked with exchange windows 2003. Oh and I built and own edmontons fastest super computer. thats about it.
O.o <= thats what there reaction will be.:lol:
man this is gonna be fun. |
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| Cobra_R |
| well maybe not fastest but the fastest in south edmonton. |
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| midnite |
the university of alberta has at least one cluster a little bigger than yours :D
http://www.ualberta.ca/CNS/RESEARCH/LinuxClusters/
quote:
Cluster Description
The cluster is made up of one head node and 25 execution nodes. Each node comprises two dual-core AMD Opteron 275 64-bit processors at 2.2GHz. In other words, there are four CPUs per node. All nodes have at least 6GB of RAM installed, 11 nodes have 10GB.
The operating system is GNU/Linux (kernel 2.6.9), supporting a 64-bit process environment. Nodes are interconnected using standard Gigabit Ethernet.
Your home directory is located on a file system that has a total capacity of 64GB. In addition, you are assigned a directory under /scratch. This file system has a total capacity of 5000GB. Both home and scratch file systems are common to all the nodes in the cluster. However, because of its larger size, we recommend that you work from your scratch directory instead of your home directory.
New and upgraded hardware coming summer 2007
* 4 additional nodes, each with 32GB of RAM
* Infiniband interconnect
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